More Active Posts
Front Page
On getting what we want
 |
 8 Comments |
It seems you can’t wade through the morass of verbal contortions that pass for speechifying in an election year without stumbling over the word “accountable.” This word is usually issued in the form of a candidate’s declared intention to seize Washington by its woolly hide and bring it to heel. In a speech announcing his candidacy, John McCain promised to hold government accountable for the money it spends. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, believes “no one should be afraid to hold our government accountable.” Barack Obama believes teachers should be held accountable — as well as taxpayers, for not giving them enough money. If you sling a stick — preferably a big, heavy stick — at a Washington politician, likely as not the word you’ll make him stutter is some version of “accountability.”
The fiction is that Washington is in the fell grip of “special interests” (read: those interests which don’t jibe with our own), and only someone pure and noble can seize the sword from the stone and restore our kingdom to its glory. Thus every four years a string of professional talkers whose skeletons are sufficiently stuffed into their closets enter the field to do battle, and the ensuing fray looks like a lunchroom slap fight at a MENSA conference.
It’s enough to make you long for a return to the days of inbred monarchies, when conditions were tougher, to be sure, but at least there was no C-SPAN.
I had a political science professor who liked to quip that the problem with American government is not that it isn’t accountable enough, but rather that it is too accountable. We run deficits because we want our government goodies but would rather have our grandchildren pay for them. We fight a two-front war without any visible sacrifice — outside that of military families — at home, because we like the idea of fending off the radical Muslim hordes, but not enough to do without the latest XBox release. We turn a blind eye to the perfect entitlement storm brewing — Medicare, Social Security, and various and sundry unaccounted federal spending commitments — because we are an Ecclesiastes 8:15 nation, and woe be unto any presidential candidate who would stand between us and our eating and drinking and merrymaking.
Going to Washington to make government accountable is like trying to steer a horse by his tail; it’s a lot of malodorous fluff, and you’re likely as not to get kicked. The people who get there, by and large, are followers posing as leaders, and they know better than to tell voters that we can’t have peace, bread, and circuses without cost. Little wonder that the entire enterprise gives the air of a frenzied game of musical chairs, with the music box fed by a purse whose claimants are growing, and whose contributors are dwindling.
If we would have accountable government, in other words, we need citizens willing to be accountable, and I suspect most of us won’t stand for that until we have no choice in the matter. Until that day comes, we’ll squeal at the mention of any significant spending cut or tax increase, continue to know next to nothing about foreign affairs and everything about American Idol, and blithely wonder, in a decade or a century or however long it takes a great nation to lose its steam, why things aren’t like they used to be.
It puts me in mind of H.L. Mencken’s famous quote: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” Only it isn’t just the common people, it’s corporations and tycoons as well, everyone bellying up to the trough that is our national altar to the god whose name is: You Deserve It All.
And for the day when that altar is whittled to a tombstone, I can recommend the inscription:
America: They got what they wanted
 |
Topic: Campaign 2008, Front Page, The Nation |  |
Email a friend |
 |
Keywords: accountability, American government, honesty, politics |  |
RSS 2.0 |
 |
Both comments and pings are currently closed. |  |
Share this: |
Don?t blame racism
Great article Tony!
Obama is the funeral director and his legions are chanting the dirge (See thread “Obama: We are the One.”)
Tony wrote; “Going to Washington to make government accountable is like trying to steer a horse by his tail; it’s a lot of malodorous fluff, and you’re likely as not to get kicked.”
Well said. It sorta puts in mind a passage from Amos: “You hate the one who reproves in court and despise him who tells the truth.” Amos 5:10.
The best example of politicians pretending to want accountability and then hating those who they themselves appointed to legally find the truth and apply accountability is seen in the unjustified hate that still lives in many politicians for Ken Starr, one of the most decent and honest men to set foot in Washington in my lifetime.
I like the following blurbs from Sir Winston Churchill:
“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”
Actually, in a democracy (as in all systems), some get what they want and others don’t. In the USA (I know we are a ‘Representative Republic’), we are free to contend and vote for what we want but not necessarily to get it.
Accountability huh? I thought “Change” was the big buzzword this year…
Joel (#3),
The Churchill quotes go hand-in-hand with a question that has been troubling me a lot lately: can ANY form of human government survive without eventually being degraded and destroyed by sinful human nature?
Sadly, I think the answer to that is, No. Some, like ours, may last longer than others, but it too is in decline and will eventually self-destruct, unless God intervenes. The Biblical truth is that sin eventually destroys everything it touches.
In the face of this we have two kinds of hope. We have a little hope that God will intervene during our earthly lives and restore America to some semblance of what she once was (until the next cycle of decline). Then we have the BIG hope—the Christian’s eternal destiny— that God will one day close down this whole operation and establish the eternal government of His Kingdom, free of all sin, and which will last forever.
Amen and Amen!
Good points, MM, and I have to agree. All it takes is one generation to fail to pass on a sufficient love of and grasp of our heritage as Americans and it can be lost (it can take several generations to dissolve after that). That’s why Jefferson said something about the price of liberty being eternal vigilance.
There is much truth in what you have said Tony, even if it is a little cynical for my taste.
I believe that Marcus Aurelius said, “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding one’s self in the ranks of the insane.”
I believe that the largest problem politically in American is that far to many people, most all professed liberals or progressives and too many Republicans, actually worship government. Politics for these folks is their religion. As I age I gain more respect for those folks in our society, many in my family and among my friends, who do not participate at all in politics. They don’t vote and they don’t talk politics.
It use to strike me as unpatriotic, lazy and irresponsible. But, lately it strikes me as very logical and rational. We have no control over spending, taxes and judges. So, if I am not willing to convert the church of American Politics, then thank you very much I will serve my family, friends and neighbors. I believe that so much of what is left that is great in American is these good folks.
Classical Lib wrote; “I believe that the largest problem politically in American is that far to many people, most all professed liberals or progressives and too many Republicans, actually worship government.”
Correct. However, the folks who do not participate at all in politics (don’t vote and don’t talk politics) only surrender the whole enterprize over to those who ‘worship’ government. That’s no solution.
In Minnesota, an angry populace punished the Republicans in our state political offices in 2006 by giving huge majorites to the Democrats. Without sufficient resistence, the Democrats just punished the populace with the biggest state-level tax increase ever, and the brunt of it will be carried by the poor and middle classes as sales taxes, gas taxes, and license fees all go up along with inflation that will make food prices rise along with everything that is shipped. A few weak and unprincipled Republicans also caved to help the Dems.
Don’t retreat into fantasyland or cynicism. You have to fight for your principles. Don’t worship government but don’t give it to those who do.